One thing is clear: The current crop of Windy City jocks doesn't even crack the top 30 national Q-score list, the industry standard for measuring consumer appeal.

But at the local level, the best metric may be the Nielsen Co.'s "N-score." It's based on a survey of around 700 local households that rates athletes by their "endorsement potential" — including how they feel about them and what words they would use to describe them — and produces a list that looks like this:

Brian Urlacher

459

Derrick Rose

331

Jonathan Toews

254

Joakim Noah

220

Devin Hester

217

Matt Forte

184

Patrick Kane

176

Paul Konerko

160

Jay Cutler

143

Julius Peppers

128

That's five Bears, two Bulls, two Blackhawks and Paul Konerko. No Cubs. (The highest-ranking Cub is Ryan Dempster, with an N-score of 40. That's good for 17th place, just behind Lance Briggs.)

And, like any good sports list, this one is chock-full of eyebrow raisers:

• Following Jay Cutler's departure from Twitter last month, only five of the top 10 (and one of the top three) have active Twitter accounts (Rose, Toews, Konerko and Peppers also do not). So much for the importance of managing your online brand.

• Of those who are on Twitter, Devin Hester has the most followers (around 191,000).

• Further evidence of the Chicago hockey renaissance. There are two Blackhawks in the top 10, and four in the top 15 (Patrick Sharp is 11th, Marian Hossa ranks 14th). As Nielsen VP-Sports Stephen Master put it, "10 years ago, there might not have been any Blackhawks players in the top 50."